Cidco’s lottery in limbo after staff demand flats

KHARGHAR HOUSING PROJECT Employees want 193 unsold flats in the scheme to be given to them on lease

CBD BELAPUR: City and Industrial Development Corporation’s ( Cidco) decision to allot the remaining houses in its Celebration housing project through a lottery may be more difficult than what the nodal agency was prepared for. This is because Cidco’s employees’ association has now demanded that the apartments be given to engineers and other employees on lease.

In 2008, Cidco had conducted a lottery to allot 2,144 apartments of KH-1, KH-2, KH-3 and KH-4 types in the Vastu Vihar and Celebration projects in sectors 16 and 17 of Kharghar respectively.

For the 193 flats that remained unsold, the nodal agency has now planned to conduct a lottery.

A proposal to this effect was approved by the board of directors recently, following which the marketing department completed all the necessary procedures.

However, the employees’ association has repeatedly demanded that instead of allotting these flats to others, they should be leased out to employees and engineers.

“The demand by the employees’ association is likely to cast a shadow over the proposed allotment of the unsold flats in Celebration,” said a Cidco official on the condition of anonymity.

A few months ago, Cidco’s director Sanjay Bhatia had announced that a lucky draw for the unsold flats would be conducted during the Ganesh festival. Since then, a number of home buyers have been waiting for the draw that is yet to be conducted because of technical issues.

Although Cidco president Pramod Hindurao recently announced that the lottery would be held around Diwali, there has been no official intimation of such a draw.

Surprisingly, despite having a number of plots and many houses and plots allot them, Cidco employees have been pressurising the management to reserve in the Celebration scheme.

According to sources, a final decision on the matter will be taken by Bhatia.